["The paper (Glos Szczecinski) appealed to the strikers…]

Scan page 5

"The paper (Glos Szczecinski) appealed to the strikers to think of children about to start a new school term and of families needing food, and to permit that such basic foods were satisfied."

"Television presented only some 'ordinary workers' speaking about the losses caused by the strikes in the harbours"

Daily Telegraph "A union leader bitterly attacked the left wing Socialist Workers Party yesterday for "callous exploitation' of an industrial dispute"

Daily Mail.

The Polish press has been slow off the mark but is learning fast. This business of ignoring strikes is elementary first grade stuff now only used by our glorious national press as a last resort.

• Western technology is however fast developing the Polish hacks. Teams of 'advisers' have been airlifted into strike-bound areas ostensibly to bring back reports of the great upheaval.

Secretly they are giving night classes to Polish journalists.

It cannot be long before the Polish press begin to feature appeals from wives and mothers for the strike to finish.

Meanwhile the Polish strikers are still finding favour in reports sent back to Britain. When was the last time the Daily Telegraph reported a strike this way?

"Poland's strikers refused to be intimidated yesterday ... Despite pouring rain, hundreds of strikers cheered every announcement that yet another industrial enterprise had downed tools"

Without a blush the same issues of these papers are recording with pleasure the fact that the French navy was sent to break the fishermen's blockade at Fos-sur-Mer and the savage attack of CPSA General Secretary, Ken Thomas.

What in Poland is heroic action, in Britain is "callous exploitation by Trotskyists. Meanwhile the Polish press brushes the dirt off its 'extremists' and 'minority of trouble makers' headlines. The tools of repression are truly international.

While the hypocrisy of the British press is being widely noted by the working class, its